


tonight is for our ghosts

by blackkat



Series: Horoscope Drabbles [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, F/F, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 22:58:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17252981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Ino is singing again.





	tonight is for our ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Normal Horoscopes on Tumblr:
> 
> Cancer: A dry salt flat. A seemingly endless plane of sea-salt and bone. The ghosts of leviathans long dead swim through what is now the sky.

Ino is singing again.

Karin doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t look, can't bring herself to. She did once, in the beginning, and she still sees it in her dreams sometimes. Too strange, too terrifying, and Karin doesn’t _want_ to be scared of Ino, who’s laughter and joy and bright things in a world of sun-bleached white. But sometimes—

Sometimes Ino sings, and in the darkness, the ghosts dance.

They're massive, leviathans in the sky, but Ino's song calls them down, sends them whirling across the salt flats, through piles of old weathered bone and over lakes so salty nothing can survive them. The beasts turn at the sound of Ino's voice, and it’s a lovely, terrible thing.

A note stretches, carries across the plane, and despite herself Karin finds her eyes sliding open, a hand coming up to brush away the hair over her face. It’s a perfect note, clear and high and sweet, and—

Ino is a wraith in the darkness, or maybe an angel. Her golden hair is a spill of sunlight, and her eyes are closed, her face raised. The sky is dark and starless, lit only by the white shapes that whirl through it, too quick for creatures so large. They're bone and skin and armored plates, skeletal but looming, and Karin wants to cower, drag the blanket back over her head, but Ino's voice is the sweetest thing she’s heard in a very long time. She stays where she is, frozen as that wraiths twist in lumbering dance, as Ino sings the ancient words of a song Karin can't even begin to understand. It _aches_ , somewhere deep inside her chest, and she wraps her arms around herself, shivering in the cold.

And then, note by fading note, Ino's song tapers off. Her voice falls, softens into a quiet hum, and then even that is gone. She stumbles back into their small camp, laughing breathlessly as the leviathans mills above them, lost in the absence of the melody, and collapses next to Karin. She wraps her arms around her, pulls her in, and says, “Lie down, come on, the ground is _warm_.”

They’ve only survived the salt flats for as long as they have because of Ino, and Karin isn't about to start doubting her now. She lets Ino roll her off the blankets, toppling them right onto the layer of salt and pulling the covers back over them, and she’s right. The ground is warm from the heat of the sun, a relief against the chilly air, and Ino is too. She snuggles right up against Karin's chest, arms wrapped around her, and says sleepily, “There's a caravan coming our way.”

Karin doesn’t ask how she knows, or if she’s sure. “Good people?” she whispers, and tangles her fingers in long, golden strands that smell like sunshine.

Ino laughs, even half-asleep, and shakes her head. “The worst,” she says, and when Karin glances down at her, her eyes are closed.

They’ll need a path around the caravan, then, or at least somewhere to hide while they pass, Karin thinks, and breathes out. She doesn’t look up at the leviathans, slowly resuming their usual ghostly drifting in the sky. Doesn’t think about Ino's songs, in a language long dead, killed off without mercy at the same time as the creatures whose ghosts still swim through the sky. Doesn’t think about what that would mean, if anyone ever got their hands on her.

Karin just wraps her arms around Ino a little more tightly, breathes in the smell of her, and closes her eyes. Ino's given them the information to get this far, and Karin has come up with the plans to _use_ that information, and neither of them are about to stop. Not before they reach the tower. Not before they find a way to live that’s more than just desperate flight.

They will. Between her and Ino, Karin _knows_ they will.

Ino's melody follows her into her dreams, and it’s a haunting, eerie, lovely thing, like sunlit days long forgotten. Karin wakes with tears on her cheeks, and ache in her chest, and the knowledge that they have to keep moving.


End file.
